


NOVA, Save Us All

by evilicious



Category: Hoshi no Kaabii | Kirby: Right Back at Ya!, Kirby (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Fate/ Au, Gen, Human, but you don't have to be at all familiar with Fate/ to get it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-29
Updated: 2020-01-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:48:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22462126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evilicious/pseuds/evilicious
Summary: Dedede learned the hard way that using an ancient artifact to summon an ancient hero wasn't no cakewalk. He thought it'd be a simple matter of getting his hands on the mystical sword and chanting some voodoo. Turned out he was grossly underestimating the situation, and all the hoops he had to jump through to get his hands on an ancient artifact in the first place.So, imagine his surprise when he went through all that work, summoned himself a heroic spirit, and somehow summoned the wrong one.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 32





	NOVA, Save Us All

She was calling him.

Her voice was unmistakable. It was warmth and love and gentle and all these wonderful, intangible feelings, and it wrapped his consciousness like a mother's embrace.

How long had it been since he heard her?

He couldn't remember. 

How long had he been asleep?

He didn't know. All he knew was he was awake now and she was calling, and of course, of _course_ , he would answer. He always answered. 

His eyes opened and the darkness was engulfed by a warm light. It was both entirely different and exactly the same as he remembered.

_Galaxia?_ He called out.

_My champion!_ She sounded like she was weeping.

His eyes scanned the room, searching for her. Her voice, the sound of bells chiming and blades clashing, filled his mind again. _We can reunite at length later. I'm not the one who has summoned you._

The warrior understood.

He kneeled.

His master is a king. (It’s been such a long time since he’s served a king.)

"Allow me to serve you, my liege," The words fell from his lips as if he'd said them a thousand times. "Meta Knightmare, at your command. Let me be your blade, your shield, your strength--"

"You ain't the hero of Dreamland." The king crossed his arms. "Who the he'll are you?"

And then, his world collapsed.

* * *

Technically speaking, he shouldn't have been there. Dedede was the king of a democratic nation. He was a figurehead, a symbol of an era past, that had no business talking peace negotiations at an international summit intended for the people who did the actual ruling.

However, in the fine print on Dreamland's earliest constitutions, it stated that, should a great peril occur, it was the king's duty to take control of the military and step in.

Dedede knew about that. He was the king. Besides being rich, famous and beloved, running the military during crisis was his singular purpose. What he _hadn’t_ known was what exactly _qualified_ as enough of a crisis to warrant him assuming power. During his years of kingly schooling, he’d operated under the assumption that a ‘state of emergency’ was either a large-scale natural disaster or war. Either way, it’d be loud and obnoxious and devasting and there was no way Dedede could possibly miss it.

Then, roughly a month ago, his Tuesday brunch at the local middle school was interrupted by a frantic phone call from the prime minister. Great Peril was happening _right now_ and he needed to _do_ something about it.

So, King Dedede went home and turned on the tube and, sure enough, there it was, clear as crystal behind a deadpan anchor.

Halcandria and Floralia were planning to invade. Not together, naturally, because that’d be too easy. They each had weapons of mass destruction—Halcandria’s more of the explosive sort while Floralia specialized in the sort of bio-terrors that best belonged on the movie screen and out of the hands of Dreamland’s enemies. Both were bad, and neither were anything Dedede wanted to deal with. 

According to Channel 6 Action News, Dreamland was facing a crisis unlike any in recent history. Channels 4 and 5 said much of the same thing. Didn’t matter who sliced it or how, the fact of the matter was, Dedede’s country was in peril. Not the immediate peril sort that swoops in on dark and stormy nights and lays waste to all in the blink of an eye, more the looming terror kind.

Swoop-and-striking peril trumped looming terror any day of the week. Sure, quick chaos was a mess to clean up after, but that foreboding feeling of knowing something was about to happen and having to take preventative measures preventing it? Yuck. Way too much prep and paperwork. Dedede was not a paperwork guy.

Which led to the obvious conclusion—rather than leaving passive-aggressive post-it notes on the fridge’s of the two wanna-be invaders, he decided to take a more direct approach.

The other countries wanted a fight, but Dreamland didn't have a fighting chance, not in the classic war scenerio.

So, Dedede just had to create a scenario where they had a chance. It involved a lot of reading, and little getting lost at the National Museum, and some good-old-fashioned King Power (yeah, that was a thing that existed and Dedede had it in spades), but, eventually, he came across the perfect solution.

Involving _magic._

* * *

The Hal Museum was easily one of the most excessively ornate buildings King Dedede had ever had the misfortune of stepping into. (As a king, he'd had the misfortune of stepping into a _lot_ of old and regally tacky buildings.) To start with, it was way too big. The place was four stories high-- not reasonable stories high, mind you. The ceilings, at minimum were fifteen feet tall and every door was clearly built for giants. It took up a whole three city blocks and clashed terribly with the more reasonably proportioned neighboring buildings. Way too much money put into a museum, if you asked him, but he hadn't been around to ask when they built the thing, so. Well. All the more reason to voice his complaints now.

"This place is a mumbly-jumbly mess," the king griped bitterly. 

His bodyguards, Blade and Sword, grunted their agreement. Between them, Bandana, the king's adviser, glanced between the map in his hands and the nearest wall sign.

"It should be up here..."

Even without the usual crowds and with the help of three extra people, Dedede still managed to get lost twice trying to find his way from the entrance to the largest and most famed exhibit, that was, supposedly, in the center. _Impossible to miss_ , the woman at the front desk had assured them before taking off for the night.

"Ajdnieejbddusisroight sure we donedjdindn passed this place before," Blade muttered, gesturing to an abstract painting. It looked near identical to six other abstract paintings they'd passed, all by different artists.

Yeah, impossible to miss, his left foot. This place was a navigational nightmare.

Wait. Hold it. 

Dedede felt his little party stop, and he couldn't help doing the same. In front of them stood an arching archway, nearly two stories in height and screaming of tasteful opulence. The entryway was a light pink marble, in stark contrast to the off-white and black that made up the rest of the building, as not to distract from the priceless relics and art that were held inside. What was most impressive was the giant, highly detailed engraving depicting the many adventures and trials of Dreamland's most famous hero.

The king whistled. Hard to find, yes, but the front desk lady wasn't lying when she said the place was impossible to miss.

This exhibit was the one the museum was original built to house, and it showed; the amount of unnecessary ornaments made the rest of the building look bland by comparison. Towering marble walls, ceilings embellished with detailed carvings that you either had to be insane or insanely rich to consider putting on a ceiling on the first place, polished black granite floors that reflected how much effort was put into the ceilings... the whole nine. Every tile and every carefully crafted pillar reeked of that subtle kind of gaudiness that was almost pleasing to look at. 

Almost. _Almost_ pleasing to look at, if it weren't for the stark juxtaposition between the interior design and the priceless pieces on display.

Dedede scoffed, glancing lazily at some of the ancient relics as they passed.

The glass case closest to him held what looked to be an oversized pink birthday candle with a star on top. According to what he learned after a brief skim over the description, it was a piece of a weapon used to seal one of the most powerful wizards who'd ever existed, despite looking like the toy of a child who'd grown to adult size, which was consistent with nearly every other artifact in the room. They all looked like something a four-year-old girl dreamed up, held great power and significance, and clashed _terribly_ with the sparkly treasure chest of a building that housed them. 

The people who designed this museum must've lost every last one of their marbles working on the walls, he thought because even an art-ick-techtually challenged individual like himself could see the clashing aesthetics.

And then, his eyes found the sword at the center of the room, and the only thing he could think was ‘ _damn_ ’ as it suddenly all made sense.

* * *

See, Dreamland didn't have weapons. It used to, but they were all outdated or lost in the era of peace. What Dreamland _did_ have was magic.

Hence crashing the summit unannounced and uninvited out of a portal of untainted darkness.

(Hey, if he was going to make an entrance at an event he wasn’t invited to, he was going to do it _stylish.)_

The reactions were absolutely _priceless._ Dreamland’s prime minister, Sir Ebrum, looks fit to spit and Dedede felts guilty about not warning him for maybe .2 seconds. Queen Sectonia’s bodyguard—not the queen herself, who remained upright and composed as ever-- the guy _tasked with protecting her_ , fell out of his chair with an embarrassing ‘eep.’ President Haltman of Halcandria jerked enough to spill most of his coffee and somehow managed to drench not only the Queen of Ripple, but the two aides on either side of her as well. It’s honestly pretty impressive, and Dedede kinda wished the black-out portal magic hadn’t sucked up the cameras so he could watch them freak out again at his leisure.

"Hello, ladies and gents." The king greeted the room. "I ain't for all this political pompness, so I'm just gonna cut the salad and skip to the meat. _Some a’_ you," he gestured at the leaders of Halcandria and Floralia respectively, palms-up and fingers open non-threateningly. Dedede might have been crass and completely intolerant of formalities, but even he knew better than to point fingers during peace negotiations with people who probably had the means to blow his head off in their back pockets. "Are interested in gettin’ your hands on some of my Dreamland, and I ain't interested in letting it go."

"This is a waste of time," President Haltman tapped his fingers on the table irritably.

The king ignored him and barreled on.

"The moment one of yous steps into Dreamland, the other one’s going to be at your back. However, I got an easy solution."

* * *

Dedede learned the hard way that using an ancient artifact to summon an ancient hero wasn't no cakewalk. He thought it'd be a simple matter of getting his hands on the mystical sword and chanting some voodoo. Turned out he was grossly underestimating the situation.

Rather, he was grossly underestimating how much the people at the museum didn't want his dirty mitts on the one-of-a-kind, two-thousand-year-old sword wielded by the nation's most noteworthy and legendary historical figure.

Granted, he couldn't blame them. His mitts were very dirty, but they were soft and warm and, even though he was a king, getting a second pair just wouldn't be the same, dammit. They had a valid argument, and he understood that.

The sacred sword, Galaxia, was the chosen blade of Dreamland's greatest hero. It was a relic and the national treasure, and, like the treasure it was, sat in a museum collecting dust behind three layers of bullet-proof glass.

Not even waving his crown around could get the curators to give him a close look at it, not without filling out a bunch of forms, and then waiting another few weeks to prepare to move the sword without damaging it and really-- it was a sword. Swords did the damage. That was their purpose, wasn't it? If the great, legendary hero had been running around with a weapon that broke by being picked up and moved, Dreamland was, pardon his French, royally fucked.

He had to jump through hoops for a week just to get them to agree to move the glass. That had been tedious, but manageable.

The sword was old. It was meaningful. It was, in many respects, holy. And, if you asked the right people, dangerous. Dedede didn't like it, but he fully understood why the museum staff was making him sign his name so many damn times.

However, he did not understand _why_ the museum staff forced him to trek though a _freaking labyrinth_ at _eleven pm_ on a _Tuesday_ instead of personally transporting the sword to his palace, which would have made it _so much_ easier for everyone involved.

* * *

Queen Sectonia scoffed haughtily, pushing her entirely too exposed bosom up with the sides of her arms. "What, you're going to just _give_ us Dreamland? That’s quite generous of you.”

Andddd that comment gets ignored as well.

"As you might know, Dreamland houses the great wish-granting star, Nova." Several members of his audience sat up straighter. Good. "Now what you _don't_ know is how to get it. I'm gonna offer you a little in. It ain't just buried in our soil. It's sealed away, and the only way to get it is to fight." He held a finger up. "But not a battle of normal means. A mage battle, with mage weapons. Those weapons being heroes of legend, long gone. Seven people marked with these--" he held up his hand to show the intricate pattern on it. "--are granted the power to summon these heroes. With me so far? Good. After that, we just duke it out, battle-royale style, and last master-hero duo takes the prize. Whoever wins gets Nova without any other casualties and we skip the war entirely."

"Hmph, and how do we get these seals? I don't suppose we just draw them on,” Sectonia waved off.

"Nova chooses. It’s within my kingly power to _initiate_ the mage battle, but I don't call the shots. The first requirement to be ‘chosen’, is being aware of what’s going on and, sans, myself, and my aides, you’re the only ones with the in.” Dedede holds up two fingers. “Second requirement is having the magic potential, which roughly half of you got. I predict one person in each of your little parties is going to have a similar mark within the next day.”

“And what of Patchwork?” Ripple’s young queen speaks up quietly, motioning to the empty seats beside her.

Dedede shrugs. “What about it? You don’t get a slice of the cake if you don’t go to the party.”

Sectonia’s personal guard raised a hand and, without waiting to be called, starts speaking. It’s like he’s never sat in a classroom or something. "You mentioned seven heroes. Assuming only one person from each of our four countries has the potential to summon, what about the other three?"

"No idea. They'll probably just be common folk. The likelihood of them making it far without knowledge of the rest of us is slim."

"Pardon me, but _why_ should we believe you?" Haltman's secretary? Notetaker? questioned with a little tilt of her head.

_This_ is the question Dedede had been waiting for. "Because I already summoned _my_ hero."

Behind him appeared a shadow. From the shadow appeared a man. The man's face and figure were shrouded in dark fabric, metal, and mystery but his golden blade screamed his identity.

The king smirked, watching the horrified recognition wash over his audience. 

"You can either invade Dreamland and deal with _him,_ or go home, rest up a little and summon yousa hero o’ your own and even the playin’ field a little. Your choice. May the spoils go to the victor." And with that, he exited the room, the hero's billowing cape swishing behind him.

* * *

"The sword's fickle. Dangerous." The head curator, a curious man who was, quite ironically, named Curio explained.

"Looks like any old fancy sword to me," Dedede replied, and it was partially true. If one had an incredibly limited understanding of what swords looked like, Galaxia would, indeed, look like any old fancy sword.

The hilt was encrusted in a vibrant blue gem that glowed whenever someone was in the general vicinity of it. The blade itself was small-- shorter than one would expect a weapon wielded by a grown man. It looked like a child's toy, which was consistent with the rest of the relics in the Hero of Dreamland exhibit; the dude had been tiny.

According to lore, the size of the blade would change to accommodate it's hero. Dedede was no scientist, but he played attention enough in school to know that's not how mass worked.

He always thought the whole Chosen Champian thing was a load of mumbo-jumbo until he tried to touch the sword and his whole arm caught on fire.

"See?" The curator answered smuggly, and if he weren't so preoccupied putting out his arm, Dedede woulda used the extinguisher to put Curio’s lights out instead.

Since nobody could touch the damn thing, they had to use a really big magnet to drag it (Carefully!) it to an empty exhibit hall, and Dedede was given until opening the next day to work his magic with the sword.

So, imagine his surprise when he went through all that work, summoned himself a heroic spirit, and somehow summoned himself the wrong one.


End file.
